


Looking Out For Each Other

by 30MinuteLoop



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Paris (City), implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-03-25 08:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13830651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30MinuteLoop/pseuds/30MinuteLoop
Summary: (spoilers through S1E15)It's the night of the ceremony at the Federation headquarters in Paris. Michael and Paul go out for a quiet drink, while most of the rest of the Discovery crew celebrates the end of the war.





	1. Chapter 1

“Lieutenant Stamets?” Michael called, sliding between groups of people filling the hall after the medal ceremony.

He turned to look at her, wearing that same somber expression he had been keeping up all day. She noticed he had already taken off his medal, but his shiny new rank badge caught her eye.

“Sorry. Lieutenant Commander,” she corrected herself, catching up to him.

He frowned slightly. “We’re not on duty. It’s Paul." She glanced toward his right hand at his side, clenched around what was probably two medals - his and Hugh’s. When she looked back up, his frown had deepened. “What do you want?” he demanded, in a voice both irritated and very tired.

“Tilly thought you could use some company.”

He looked over her shoulder, probably trying to pick Tilly out in the crowd. “She sent you to tell me that?”

“She and the rest of the bridge crew are going out to a nightclub,” Michael explained. “But she knows that I wouldn’t enjoy that. And she knows that you wouldn’t either. She thought you might want some more... mellow company.” She sighed and shook her head ruefully. “ _I_ could use some company.” Despite the celebratory nature of today's events, she didn't feel like celebrating any more. But she also didn't want to be alone with her thoughts.

Paul smiled the closest thing to a genuine smile she had seen on him since he’d woken up from his mycelial coma, although it still didn’t quite reach his eyes. “She’s always looking out for us,” he said, his voice catching on the last word. He looked away for a moment. “Okay. Where to?”

“My mother told me about a quiet restaurant around the corner from here. If that sounds good.”

“Lead the way.”

 

It was more of a wine bar than a restaurant, but it was definitely quiet, and dark. The booths were set deep into the walls, with high-backed seats that made each booth almost like a room of its own. Each table was lit welcomingly by a triangle of three red candles in glass votives.

The waitress was a tall graceful human woman wearing a long black dress, with dark brown hair and pale skin. She seemed to just glide across the floor as she led them to a booth and took their orders.

Michael ordered a glass of the house red wine. Paul raised an eyebrow at her, and ordered a pot of black tea. Michael raised an eyebrow back.

“I didn’t take you for a wine drinker,” he said, once the waitress had left.

“I’m not usually. People change.” She paused. “I didn’t think you abstained.”

“Circumstances change,” Paul said.

They both looked at their hands folded on the table and then back at each other. At least the silence was comfortable, if not painless.

Michael took a moment to look around the room, furnished with deep red curtains, cherry wood tables, chairs, and booths and the matching red cushions. The room exuded warmth and safety and humanity. She felt a little more ease in her heart, appreciating the beauty.

The waitress reappeared with a round tray holding a glass of wine, a pot of tea, and a round gray porcelain tea cup. She set each item on the table smoothly and then glided away.

Paul fidgeted with the handle of the teapot as Michael took a sip of her wine.

“Much better than Terran wine,” she remarked, closing her eyes for a moment to savor the taste.

“You drank Terran wine?” Paul grimaced.

“When I was trying to maintain my cover with the emperor, yes.” _And when I was with Ash_ , she wouldn’t add out loud. Those evenings with Ash had been the only bright spots of her days on the ISS Shenzhou.

Michael wondered where Ash was right now. What was he doing? Why was he with L’Rell? Why would he go with someone who had hurt him so badly? She wouldn’t have -

“Hugh and I… well. He usually chose the wine.” Paul swallowed, his eyes closing briefly as he did so. “It’s not just that it was something we did together, but I probably shouldn’t really start drinking -” He met Michael's eyes, swallowed again, his face threatening to crumple. He looked toward the wall next to the booth, obviously trying to maintain composure.

Michael took a larger drink of her wine. Concentrated on all the flavors. Focused on being present, maintaining her own self-control, remaining very... _rational_. It didn't seem quite right, but she couldn't muster anything helpful to say.

After a few moments, Paul’s expression returned to careful blankness. He noticed his full teapot, whose handle he was still gripping tightly. He reached for his cup and poured himself some tea.

“I have to apologize to you,” he said, examining the tea.

“For what?”

“I didn’t trust you, at all. When you arrived on Discovery.” He sighed. “I was unbelievably rude to you.”

“You believed the stories about me,” Michael said. “I believed them too.”

“No, no, it’s not just that.” He sighed again, sipped his tea, and finally looked up to meet her eyes. “I blamed you for the war. I blamed you for taking me away from my lab, for Hugh and I ending up on Discovery. And when you showed up in my engineering room I felt like I was being uniquely punished for something. And then I had to work with you. Work with the person who'd brought me into this war. It was infuriating.”

“This doesn’t sound like an apology,” Michael commented drily, eyes narrowing a bit. “You’re just listing things you blamed me for.”

Paul opened and closed his mouth without a sound. Finally, he said, “You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Michael started to wonder if this was such a good idea. She’d known how much Paul had disliked and distrusted her in the beginning. But she wasn’t ready to get a list of Paul's pre-judgements against her, not now, not after she’d clawed her way through so much just to be sitting safely in Paris at the end of this awful, awful year. She would rather be alone than with someone who was going to give her something else to feel terrible about.

She offered, just as much for her own sake as his, “Look, I can go -”

“No, _wait_. Please. I'm sorry. Give me a minute?” Paul drummed his fingers on the table as he looked into the rest of the room, the waitstaff passing back and forth in silhouettes and shadows. The soft sounds of laughter and conversation provided a melodious background for this tense silence. “I misjudged you,” he began again, still not looking at her. “I was angry, but I should have blamed Lorca. He brought us to Discovery, he brought you to Discovery, he brought Tyler on board out of a Klingon prison and promoted him without a second thought. All so he could go home. He _used_ all of us.” He scowled and tightened his grip on the tea cup.

“Starfleet misjudged you,” he continued. “Mutinies can be necessary. I understand that now. Before the war, I was a scientist. I didn’t know what war was like. I knew I didn’t like it and that I didn’t want any part of it. I’ve never liked the limitations of the command structure, but when I wasn’t conscripted into fighting a war, it at least seemed tolerable. When Cornwell was trying to destroy Qo’nos, I finally really understood the choice you made. By that point, I knew I would have mutinied against Lorca, if he was still around. I know Hugh would have.”

Michael’s heart clenched at the mention of the doctor. He had brought so much compassion and personality to his work, just as Tilly did. She missed his light sarcasm, so reminiscent of Captain Georgiou… She was grateful for the warm hearts and solidarity of their crew, but there was, indeed, a Culber-shaped hole in their midst.

“So I’m sorry for how I treated you. I hoped it was clear how my opinion changed over time, but… saying it out loud makes it more official.” He lifted his cup to her. “I’m glad that we are going to keep serving together. You did some amazing work out there. I’m sure you'll do a lot more.”

Michael felt irrational pride welling up in her. She had only done her job, followed her principles. She smiled slightly and raised her glass to clink against Paul’s. “Thank you.” They drank.

If only the emotional consequences of all that amazing work had not been so high. She felt still like she was only beginning to understand how to really feel and act as a human, having been trained so long to suppress it. Suppress her _human_ heart.

“I loved Ash,” she said suddenly. “I still do.”

Paul looked at her with mixed surprise and anguish. She remembered him running up to her at the crew party - weeks? months ago? - and shouting at her abruptly over the music, " _You've never been in love_."

“Yes. It didn't take long after that party." She smiled faintly. For such a little while, she had been _so_ happy. "I know what he did to me. I know what he did to Hugh. It wasn’t him, and it was him.” Michael felt tears welling up in her eyes. She fought to steady her voice around the lump in her throat. “He couldn’t back away when he should have. He knew what was happening and he tried to ignore it. That makes him _responsible_.”

“Oh, I know. He could have spoken up any number of times before or after he -" Paul's eyes widened suddenly. "Oh, and did you know that he _apologized_ to me for it?”

Michael shook her head, and she felt a tear track its way down her cheek.

“He ran into me in the hallway. He told me he was _sorry,_ " he said with venom, throwing his hands into the air. "Honestly - what am I supposed to do with his fucking _apology_? Is it going to bring Hugh back?"

Michael nodded, looking down into her glass and tracing her finger around the rim slowly. “I couldn’t even see him when I came back from the Charon. It was Tilly who finally talked me into speaking to him. She was spending time with him and said he needed to be part of our community, more or less. I’m not sure she wanted us to talk just so I could break up with him, but that’s how it went.” She sighed, memories of Ash’s anguished face during that conversation flashing before her eyes. “He’s not Voq. But he is still haunted by Voq.”

“Wait. Did you say Tilly _talked to_ Ash? Before the mission to Qo'nos?"

“She felt it was important to make him feel welcome. To let him know that he  _was_ welcome," Michael said, rolling her eyes slightly. Tilly coming down on her for not talking to Ash still stung. Michael didn't regret talking to Ash, but she had not wanted to feel coerced into doing so, as if she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. Tilly ought to have known that was unfair to ask of her.

Paul’s mouth dropped open as he absorbed this information. “I guess some part of me assumed that she was on my side.”

“She’s on everybody’s side."

“And I’m sure he and we are better off for it,” he said, dipping his chin and spreading his hands wide to acknowledge the fact. “But I hope he stays as far away from me as humanly - as possible."

Michael’s communicator beeped before she could respond. She pulled the device from her pocket and flipped it open. 

“Burnham here.”

They heard the pulsing beats of distant club music first, and then: “Michael! We’re just leaving the club and everyone’s going to another place, but I am exhausted!” Tilly had a way of making even exhaustion sound energetic. “Do you want any company? Are you with Stamets?”

Michael looked at Paul, now with one eyebrow raised to direct the question to him. He nodded, mouthing, “Sure.”

“Tilly, yes, we’re over at the Parisian wine bar around the corner from the Federation building. Come join us.”

“Okay! See you soon! Tilly out.”


	2. Chapter 2

Michael flipped her communicator shut and slid it back into her pocket.

“I very much doubt Tilly is tired,” Paul said.

“I think she’s looking after us again.”

Paul downed his tea and poured himself another cup. “I don’t know how she does it. She saved my life. She proved theories about the network that would have taken, I don’t know, _decades?_ to accomplish by other means. She made the terraforming project possible. If she wasn’t so new to Starfleet, I’d say they should promote her again.”

“We are very lucky to work with her,” Michael added. “I don’t know how I would have made it through without her. Even though she didn’t quite literally save my life.”

“Oh, I’m sure she did, somehow. And yet, at the end of a triumphant day, getting promoted to ensign, and having a chance to celebrate, she still wants to come sit with two sad old people in a dim bar?” Paul, eyes wide and incredulous, gestured at himself and Michael.

“Old?” Michael sputtered, a grin spreading across her face. “Speak for yourself! Do you even know how old I am?”

But her smile disappeared almost as quickly as it began, when she saw the flash of Hugh’s medal in Paul’s left hand, the black ribbon poking out. _Some of us don’t have a chance to get old._ She thought of the knot of twine in her pocket, her own talisman of things lost. _Some things don’t have a chance to get old._

By the time Michael had shaken off her bout of melancholy, Paul had set the medal down on the table and grabbed his cup instead, his thumbs rubbing against the edge of the porcelain nervously. “Sometimes I don’t think about it - think about _Hugh_ \- for a few minutes. Things almost seem normal. I _forget_ why there's this pit in my stomach all the time.”

“When I was in prison, sometimes I’d get lost in my reading,” Michael added sympathetically. “When I looked up from my book - every time it was such a blow.”

“You made it out of there, eventually, though,” Paul said into his teacup.

“I don’t know that I’m going to ever make it out of the guilt,” Michael countered. “We’re here because I killed a Klingon. We’re here because I mutinied. We’re here because I went to prison. And you and I are sitting here now, only because of Tyler.”

And with that, they both sighed heavily.

“We are going to be _excellent_ company for Tilly.” Paul rolled his eyes and picked up Hugh’s medal again with his left hand, his thumb rubbing the edge of the medal with heartbreaking gentleness as he drank his tea.

On top of the heartbreak, this triggered a bitter pang of envy in Michael. _Hugh never betrayed Paul like Ash betrayed me._ _And yet I still love him?_ She drank down the last of her wine and idly fidgeted with the stem of the glass. Paul just stared into space.

 

Five minutes of increasingly awkward silence later, Tilly burst into the bar, wearing a v-neck brown dress and knee-high boots, long hair flying behind her. Michael waved, and Tilly finally saw Michael and Paul in the shadowy booth. She grinned and bustled over.

"I am really glad to see you both," she said, sliding into the booth next to Michael.

“Not a good night?” Michael asked, looking at her friend’s flushed face.

Tilly shook her head. “No, it was! But a lot of the bridge crew - they just didn't know Dr. Culber that well. They tried to be there for Tyler, and they supported him, but they’re not hurting like we are. Like _you_ are.” She gestured to her friends. “So. I wanted to be here."

Michael felt an uncharacteristic urge to lean on Tilly, literally, for comfort. It felt so good to be seen for her struggles. So many people just never brought up the painful losses and betrayals the crew had faced. Or, after her speech today, seemed to assume that she was already past everything that had happened.

Deciding to embrace this human impulse, she scooted over a few inches and just rested her cheek on Tilly’s shoulder, closing her eyes. "Thank you. I'm glad you came," she said quietly. Tilly rested her head on top of Michael’s.

Paul had a little sad smile on his face, Michael noticed once she'd gotten comfortable enough with this affectionate gesture to look up.

"You’re right, Michael. I’m the only old one here. You have long lives ahead of you. I’m just… at an end.”

 _I hope he’s not saying what I think he’s saying._ Michael sat up quickly, glancing at Tilly’s horrified face and receiving confirmation - this was a worrisome statement. "Hey, now!" Tilly admonished him. "That's not true."

Paul raised an eyebrow, his face twisting acerbically, as he shoved the medal on the table in her direction several inches. " _Please_ \- tell me which part of - I can't use the spore drive any more, my research partner and best friend is dead, the love of my life is dead, and the war is over, _isn't_ about things coming to an end," he snapped.

"We have so much more to explore!" Tilly pointed out. "We don't know who our captain is or where we're going next! But we don't have to be at war anymore. That's a _beginning_."

"That is so easy for you to say."

"You're right, it is easy for me to say.  So much easier than it must be for you," Tilly said quietly, hurt in her voice. "I just think you can get back to what you wanted to do with your research in the first place, right? Find out new things. Invent new technologies that could revolutionize how we travel, how we communicate. Help people."

"That used to be all I wanted," Paul said wistfully. He looked down at Hugh's medal. "Now the only thing I really want to do is find out if Hugh's still in there. If I can’t do that…"  
"In where?" Michael asked.

"I saw him. In the network. He warned me about what my mirror counterpart was doing. We talked for a while. He - he was the one to tell me that he had died. Somehow the network had snagged his consciousness."

Tilly nodded. “You told me this before. After we discovered that the mycelium on Discovery had died.”

Michael, on the other hand, had not heard this story. "You think Hugh is still alive in some way," she said.

"He helped me guide the Discovery back to our own universe. He played Kasseelian opera and lit up the path for me to follow. Who knows where we would have ended up without him."

Michael noted, "This wasn't in your mission report. Why?”

Paul shrugged. "I didn't want to tell Starfleet. It's one thing they can't have.” He started to tear up, voice getting shaky. “I have no reason to stay on Earth now. I have nothing to keep me here. They're getting me out into space again to do god knows what after taking everything from me. They don’t want me to keep researching what I have learned over the past year, which means if they knew, they could just shut down my research altogether. So they _can’t_ know.”

“I understand.” Every mission report and log she had filed since she and Ash had been together was heavily self-censored. _I slept with the enemy and wrote that he was my bodyguard. I wrote, ‘Tyler told me he was going with L’Rell and left.’ Not a lie. Not the truth._

Tilly’s face was set in that look of stubborn struggle Michael had come to appreciate so much over the past six months. "We're going to help you," Tilly said. "Whatever you need, to talk to him, to make that connection, we're going to help you."

"I don't know what it's going to take," Paul warned. "And I'm not going to let you torpedo your careers for this."

"We can talk about that when we get to it," Michael interjected. "If Hugh is in there, we’ll find him. But I would prefer _not_ to start planning our next mutiny just yet.”

"I'm not talking mutiny," he protested weakly. "Maybe just a few unauthorized experiments."

"That's the very least we can do for him. And you," Tilly said, holding eye contact with him.

"Thank you both. Honestly. I -” He paused, tears welling up, then sighed loudly as he wiped them away. "Okay. That's about all I can take of feelings this evening. Fuck it. Let's do shots."

“Shots?!” Michael was getting images of drunken ensigns on the Shenzhou who pounded shots like it was their reason for living. This tradition made shore leave extremely unpleasant. And anyway, hadn’t Paul said he wasn’t drinking?

“Yesssss, shots!” Tilly exclaimed. She seemed equal parts excited by the suggestion and stunned that it came from Paul.

“Shots,” Paul said firmly. “It’s a Starfleet - no, a _human_ \- custom and if you’re going to drink, I think you should try it. I normally wouldn’t” - he had apparently noticed Michael’s expression - “but I think… I think you’re both right. We do have a few things to celebrate.”

“One shot,” Michael agreed. “But it depends. A shot of what.”

“Your family was from the United States, right? From the south?” Michael nodded. Paul’s words triggered sensations of one of her earliest memories, the hot muggy weather along a river in rural Georgia, the sounds of her parents laughing as she splashed in the cold water. Her heart beat faster. “So we’ll do bourbon. Traditional.”

“Very well,” she decided, going all in. “Bourbon it is.” She already felt warm with the glass of wine she’d drank, and with the shift in energy that Tilly had brought to the table.

Tilly turned to Paul. “Wait, do they even do shots here? Much less bourbon shots?”

Paul looked around at the warm, dark, undeniably classy Parisian wine bar. “They serve Federation diplomats and officials and an awful lot of humans. They do shots.” He waved at their waitress, who came over and took the order. She warned them, they were going to have to settle for replicated bourbon, but the bar had a pretty good recipe.

Tilly kept up the energy while they waited, telling entertaining tales from her evening with the bridge crew. Watching her friend light up with a story about Airiam flirting with a very attractive Andorian at the bar, hearing Paul bark out a short and genuine laugh at Tilly's seated imitation of Rhys dancing - she felt overflowing warmth in her heart and gratitude for what she'd gained: colleagues, and friends.

The waitress set a shot of bourbon in front of each of them. Michael eyed the brownish liquid warily. But the expressions of her friends - joy on Tilly’s face and something like relief on Paul’s - spurred her to lift the shot in the air along with them.

Tilly said, “To friends,” with that brave smile. She nodded at Michael. “You do one.”

Michael recalled Sarek pinning her badge onto her uniform. He had smiled. Amanda’s smile. Her birth parents hugging her as they packed up their picnic on the river. “To family,” she said, feeling the warmth of this moment on her cheeks.

She and Tilly both looked at Paul. “To science,” he offered after a moment. “Cheers.”

Simultaneously, they downed their shots. Michael squeezed her eyes shut as the liquid burned down her throat, and then opened them wide. She reached for her water glass. “Well, that wakes you up. Whew.” She downed the glass.

“Ready to go dancing?” Tilly joked.

“I certainly do not feel very inhibited right now,” she admitted, and her friend grinned even wider.

“I know you don’t remember this,” Paul said, “but you danced in the corridor of Discovery with me during one of the time loops. Maybe a lack of inhibition would help you not step on people’s feet?”

Michael gave him a mock look of offense. “Maybe we should conduct an experiment. Mr. Stamets?” She held out her hand.

Paul declined, shaking his head once and looking suddenly shy, but Tilly grabbed her hand. “Let’s!”

And so Michael ended up attempting to dance the waltz with her best friend in the middle of a serious Parisian wine bar, and stepping on Tilly’s feet a few times, even though Tilly let her lead.

After a year of feeling boxed in, mentally, emotionally, and physically, feeling uninhibited was a welcome respite. Her sentence erased, her rank restored, a relationship ended, but friendships further cemented. For the first time in a long time, Michael Burnham could truly move freely.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or kudos and let me know what you thought!


End file.
